


Lights Out

by Beb



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Loki (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Loki Gets a Hug (Marvel), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Thor (Marvel), Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Thor is a Good Bro (Marvel), Whump, mention of Thanos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 23:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30079746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beb/pseuds/Beb
Summary: There was an outage in the Avengers Compound. Just an electrical error, really, no one thought it was a big deal at all... until it became a pretty big deal.
Relationships: Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 115





	Lights Out

"Any luck?" Clint asked the moment Tony emerged from the basement after having had gone down to check the transformer, to see if he could bring the power back and so no one would have to spend the rest of the night in utter darkness, considering it happened to be nighttime.   
(Tony was in his lab, in the midst of his working when the lights went out with no warning, like someone suddenly surprised him with a bag covering his head)

"Sorry, bud. Looks like we're going to have to spend the rest of the night in the dark. I called our technician dude. Apparently the soonest he can be here is tomorrow." Tony shrugged. He hoped his friends could see him shrug, with how dark it was.

Though they definitely heard him, and he sure heard them groan and complain, their voices overlapping — and Tony thought, a bit amused, 'who would've thought the Avengers were, in fact, a bunch of whiners'

Though if there were to be anyone who wasn't saying anything at all, it was Loki. He stood silently next to his brother.

 _A whole night in the dark,_ Loki tried not to let the thought get to him. Of course, he could spend a whole night in darkness. He wasn't a child.

He used to be scared of the dark when he was little, where he would always sneak into Thor's room at night for comfort. The fear went away as he reached adolescence, in which he and Thor never spoke anything about it, like their childhood lives were nothing but a dream. They barely spoke anything to each other in their lives of late, even after Loki's redemption, after Thanos, after they both found their new home at the Avengers Compound with the rest of the team.   
(And Loki could lie to himself, but he wondered, once or twice, what went wrong. Why they weren't able to speak so easily with each other like when they were children anymore. When, exactly, did they start growing apart? Things were never the same after his falling from the Bifrost. He supposed, even if the thoughts hurt, they weren't brothers anymore)

"You okay?"

Loki flinched slightly as Thor's voice snapped him out of his trance. "I'm fine," said the younger brother. He was grateful the absence of light helped conceal the paleness on his face.

Loki could spend an entire night in the dark, he could. He... had to.

The last time he spent time in utter darkness was in the Sanctuary, after his falling into the abyss, into Thanos's grasp. It wasn't exactly a pleasant memory.

______________________________ 

Loki excused himself to his room. And sure, he slept with his light off, but it was never... this dark. There used to be lights shining through his windows from Bucky's garden, from the yard in which Tony normally made sure it wasn't completely dark, for security purpose. There were always little lights that kept the atmosphere in the room from blackness. All of that gone with the power outage.

_Do you remember what happened in the dark, Laufeyson?_

No. Loki shook his head, ridding himself off the voices creeping in the back of his mind. What happened.... happened. It was in the past. It was over. He _survived_ it.

He made his way to the bed and lied down on the soft mattress.

Except it wasn't soft. Coldness piercing through his skin the second his back touched the hard metallic table. Dozens of shadowy, masked figures creeping through the dark, circling him. Their claw-like hands reaching down towards his body, trying to rip him open like how they did in the Sanctuary.

Loki jerked up into sitting with a scream. Green seidr beaming through the palm of his hand, illuminating the room in shimmering emerald in the wake of his panicking. The masked creatures were gone, and the bed — he was on his bed, not strapped down on the table — was soft like it was supposed to be.

He was panting hard, wild eyes darting this way and that as though he was expecting them to jump out of the shadow and bury their knife deep into his bone like how they did during his being held captive by Thanos. The magical light on his hand slowly faded away, it took concentration and effort for Loki to conjure that, and he couldn't hold onto it for the rest of the night, even if he wanted to. Which left him in utter darkness again.

He gulped, feeling sweat run down his temple. It was... not real. Just his brain playing tricks on him. He tried to slow down his breathing. He never told anybody — even Thor, _especially_ Thor — what happened during his time with Thanos, what Thanos put him through. He meant to keep it that way. He just had to... survive another night in complete darkness.

Because darkness meant pain and torture. Loki remembered, even if he wished he could forget, Thanos locking him away in a small cell where it was so dark he couldn't see his own hands, his thoughts being his worst enemies back then. And when they — Thanos's children — dragged him out so they could hurt him, break him down from inside out, it was just as dark. It was always dark he, at one point, believed he had gone blind.

Which was probably the worst, because he didn't know if they were here, right next to him, waiting to cut him again. They could be here and Loki wouldn't have a single clue about it.

Back at the Sanctuary, it was just as dark as it was here in Stark's property.

 _He will make you long for something as sweet as pain._ Loki, still on his bed, spun around. He could almost feel the sickening air at the back of his neck as the voices whispered to him from behind.

There was no one in the room. Just him and the sound of his uneven breathing.

 _Go to Thor,_ the voices urged. Although this time it was his own.

Thor. Loki tried to catch his breath. Thor would make it all go away, like he always did when they were kids. When going to Thor's room for comfort after he woke from a nightmare was so easy. When Thor would simply scoot over so Loki could climb up on the bed next to him, so he could have Thor protectively wrap his arms around him, was so easy.

Nothing was easy anymore. They weren't... the brothers they once were.

 _Pathetic Jotun runt,_ the voices sounded like Ebony Maw. Loki remembered their voices very well. All of them.

"You're not real," he said out loud, his voice shook, to banish the monsters or to offer himself comfort, Loki wouldn't know. Perhaps both.

_Your brother resents you. He tossed you into an abyss so you faced your death. Yet here you are. You don't deserve to be here, Loki. No one wants you._

Loki spun around, trying to locate where exactly the voices came from. It sounded like it came from all directions yet at the same time it sounded like it came from nowhere at all. They were in his head, which was probably the worst.

He's coming, Loki.

"No," Loki laughed. He started laughing and he realized, with terror seeping down his spine, he couldn't stop. "He's dead. Nothing but a fragment. A ghost. He cannot hurt me,"

_He's coming and there's nowhere you can hide._

"No," Loki shook his head, still laughing though he started shaking, trembling like a sitting duck awaiting its inevitable fate. "You are dead." He shouted. His eyes landed on a figure standing in the corner of his room.

It flashed him a sinister smile, sharp teeth on full display as its disturbing grin widened until it reached its ears, torn open its own flesh. Blood dripping down its chin. It whispered in a cold voice, "I'm coming for you, Laufeyson."

______________________________ 

Thor knew something was wrong. Loki had been... quiet, and even though he had _normally_ been quiet, he was... too quiet tonight, precisely after the power went off. There was something in his voice when Thor asked if he was fine. And he said he was.

(Of course, Loki would undoubtedly say that, even if he were on fire. He didn't let Thor see his pain anymore, or maybe not outright pain, but whatever Loki considered weakness — even if Thor would disagree most of the times — he hid it from Thor. They used to be brothers who were able to tell each other anything and everything, then they simply walked different paths. And Thor understood that, even if it did hurt to think about how close they were during their childhoods. He didn't mind whatever path Loki chose, because in the end he did get Loki back, didn't he? Loki was here, even with Asgard gone and with their friends and family gone, Loki was still here. So Thor supposed he should be grateful for that, even if he wished Loki talked to him like he used to when he was that little boy)

The bottom line was, something was off with Loki. Thor was lying awake in his bed, staring up at the ceiling even though all he saw was darkness.   
Tony still hadn't been able to get the issue fixed. Tomorrow, he had said. For tonight it was just darkness for everybody in the compound. It was... inconvenient, sure, Thor had to fumble for a flashlight to guide his way to the bathroom, or to the kitchen for late night snack. But it was nothing. So he let his mind travel aimlessly, anything that would keep his mind off Loki, because Thor might just give himself a headache trying to figure what was bothering his brother when, Thor wasn't proud of it, he realized he was clueless most of the times when it came to Loki.

His mind traveled back to when he and Loki were children. Thor unconsciously smiled at the warm memories that brought with it chilling coldness, for his brother no longer sought his comfort like his younger self did. Thor remembered little Loki being afraid of the dark, always insisting there were monsters under his bed and wouldn't quite go to sleep, no matter how hard Frigga tried to coax him into resting, until he climbed up on Thor's bed, with quite an effort, considering how small Loki was, and he would just sleep there next to Thor.

Thor's younger self used to make a fuss about Loki hogging his blanket. Thor chuckled softly at the memory. Now he just thought he would give Loki all the damn blankets he wanted, if it meant they got to be the brothers they once were again.

Little Loki used to be afraid of the dark. Thor chuckled again, thinking about how — if they were still kids — Loki would've rushed here by now.

His phone vibrating on his nightstand brought Thor back to reality. He fumbled around a bit. It was Captain Rogers. Thor slightly frowned. He couldn't think of any reason why the Captain would call so late at night, unless it was emergency.   
(Steve wasn't the type of person to chitchat. Tony was, he called all the time to discuss about whatever, regardless of the time. Or that Spider Child — Peter was the name — who was ridiculously fast at typing, the kid wouldn't stop sending him what Midgardians called memes. Most of the times Thor didn't understand the meaning behind them, but to make the kid stop bombarding his Messages app with at least five-long paragraphs of explanation, Thor would normally just send back an lol — he learned from Tony to always lol when he didn't know how to respond to a text message)

"Steve," Thor brought the phone to his ear.

"Thor," Steve's voice was... off. Like he was concerned and was trying to control himself not to outright panic. Thor got up into a sitting position. His suspension about this being an emergency of some sort seemed to be correct.

"What is it?" Thor asked.

There was a pause from Steve's side that, for Thor, almost felt too long, before Steve next spoke. "It's Loki,"

______________________________ 

Thor found Loki on the floor with his back against the wall in a dark corridor. Steve was the first who found him, and the Captain was still present when Thor got to the scene — said he didn't want to leave Loki alone, and he couldn't get Loki to get on his feet, so he called instead.

Loki was screaming when Thor got there. Even in the absence of light Thor could see enough to tell his brother was crying, by the look of it it seemed Loki had, at one point, yanked frantically at his hair, or tried to rip open his skull.

"Thor," Steve looked relieved when Thor arrived. By the look of it, the Captain had been standing here awkwardly not really knowing what to do for quite sometime. "I don't know what to do. He just —"

"What happened?" Thor's question was directed at both Loki and Steve, though he figured Loki wasn't in the condition to provide an answer.

"I don't know. I found him here then he just started screaming right after I called you,"

"Loki," Thor crouched down in front of Loki. He felt that pang in his chest when Loki flinched away. There was fear in his wild, unseeing eyes, like he didn't know Thor was here, like he didn't know where he was at all. "Brother, it's me. What happened? Who — who hurt you?"

"No," Loki snarled. "Go away. Go!" He screamed the last word, and if there was clear evidence of fear on his face, there was also vivid hatred there. "Go! Leave me alone!"

Thor would've thought that was aimed at him, hadn't it been for that... something. The way Loki's gaze was behind Thor's shoulders, not particularly glued to one spot but darting around. Like Thor wasn't here and whatever got Loki like this was something unseen.   
(Thor looked around, he tried following Loki's gaze. There was nobody else except them and Steve, and Loki wouldn't stop searching. His eyes traveled past Thor and the Captain like he couldn't acknowledge their presence. Like he couldn't acknowledge anything at all)

"Loki, it's me." Thor cupped his face, stilling him.

"No," Loki hissed savagely. "You're dead. You're dead. You're dead!"

"Loki —"

"My brother killed you." Then Loki started laughing so disturbingly Thor felt shivers running down his spine. "You — he killed you. You were decapitated,"

"Loki," Thor gulped. " _He_ is not here. He can't hurt you anymore,"

"No," something shifted in Loki's eyes. "Go away. Leave me alone. Leave me alone!!" He kicked. Thor jumped back. He got on his feet while Loki remained screaming on the floor.

Somehow the commotion must have alerted the others. Thor didn't know when exactly they had audiences, but when he turned around Tony was here, with a little flashlight from his phone, so were Wanda and Natasha. They were all in their pajamas and the look on their faces, even in the dark, asked what was going on.

"I —" Thor was wordless. He had no idea what was going on. "He's... I don't know. I don't know what happened," but if he had to guess, Thor might just start to be able to put the pieces together; an episode of a mental breakdown where his brother saw things that weren't here.

Thor was helpless, and he was sure it showed on his face.

Wanda took a step forward. "May I?"

And really, Thor didn't know what to do. Loki wouldn't calm down, and he was afraid his brother was only going to hurt himself, if this continued. So he gave her a quick nod.

She reached down, wordlessly casting spell till red thread of magic started weaving around her fingers. Wanda didn't touch him, but under the matter of five seconds Loki was cooling down. Three seconds later his eyes drifted shut. 

He never hit the floor, for Thor caught him in time.

______________________________ 

When Loki next opened his eyes the sun had already surpassed the horizon. The power came back. He was on the medical floor, though all the scans and test results indicated nothing out of normal. So it was all in his head, just as Thor expected (and Thor hadn't the faintest idea what was worse)

At least, on the bright side, he wasn't outright panicking the second he swam back to consciousness. And it wasn't dark anymore. 

His eyes found Thor, and he looked tired.

"Hey there," Thor smiled. During Loki's being out cold Thor had spent the great amount of time rehearsing his wording in his head, how best to approach and ask what was going on last night without making Loki feel like he was being pushed. "How are you feeling?"

"Thor," Loki's voice was hoarse, barely audible. "What..." he trailed off, then he remembered what happened; a creature was in his room, in the dark, he saw it, it came for him. Then he ran out the door. Loki remembered voices, they belonged to Thanos and his children. He remembered them trying to drag him to hell with them. Then... then he didn't remember anything anymore.

"Thor," this time there was panic in Loki's voice. "They -- they found me, Thor. Please, you have to help me. They're going to --"

"Loki, Loki..." Thor cut him off, though his voice was gentle, understanding. "It's okay. It's alright. You're safe,"

"No, Thor," Loki shook his head. Tears were falling down his face, and Thor moved his armchair closer so he could place his hand on top of Loki's. "It -- it was in my room. They found me, they're going to take me --"

"Loki," Thor paused for a short moment. He couldn't think of other words to say it except saying it as what it was. He sighed, and forced himself not to avert his eyes, knowing doing so could risk Loki taking it the wrong way. "It was the dark, wasn't it? You were... you never liked being in the dark,"

Loki opened his mouth, nothing came out. It was the dark. It drove his mind beyond the point of sanity and he had always known it. His poisonous mind had always conjured... things, bringing his worst nightmares to life. It had always been the dark.

"Brother," Thor ran his thumb softly through Loki's hand. "It's okay,"

"No," Loki shook his head, though he didn't look like he was going to leap into an episode. If anything he looked exhausted.... exhausted and ashamed. "I..." He gulped, then he averted his eyes. "I never told you what happened... in the Sanctuary. With Thanos,"

He held Thor's hand back, and Thor gave it a gently squeeze. "What he did..." Loki went on without looking at his brother. "I should've told you. You... have the right to know,"

Thor could guess what happened. He knew better than to ask Loki, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to know, from Loki's mouth, what happened. "He hurt you, didn't he?"

Loki nodded. He bit his lip so he wouldn't start sobbing. "All I knew was darkness," he said. "Darkness and pain,"

"I'm sorry I wasn't there," Thor said, because he didn't know what else to say, what comfort to offer when all he felt was rage building up in his stomach at the thought of that thing hurting his brother whom he swore, ever since he was a child, to protect.

"Can you hold me?" Thor wasn't expecting Loki to ever ask that. He wasn't aware of himself getting on his brother's bed, like his body acted on its own, and pulling Loki close to his chest, wrapping his arms around him. 

Loki buried his face in the fabric of Thor's shirt, and Thor felt it getting wet from his brother's tears. He pretended not to hear Loki's muffled sobbing as he clung so desperately onto Thor like his very life depended on him.

Thor held him close. This was the least he could do to make up for all those years of torture Loki had to go through, alone without Thor there to protect him. 

Thor held him close just like when they were children.

**Author's Note:**

> If you folks want more of me, I am also available on [Tumblr.](http://bebx.tumblr.com/) Come chat. The inbox is open there.


End file.
